The office address is 1106 Meridian St, Suite 251, Anderson, IN 46016 (follow that link for a map.)
Telephone: 765-641-7906
Fax: 765-374-3811
The best time to reach me by telephone is (usually) after 4:00 pm.
My traditional web page is here.
You may also want to take a look at my Yahoo Local listing here.
Want to know more? I have more information on web page at page for more background. Also I have a Naymz page here:
If you do want to hire, please use my client questionnaire.
If you have an employees, you got to worry about withholding taxes. The IRS has a page on this subject that ought to be read by anyone starting a business who will have employees.
In my opinion, a business needs a lawyer before starting the business. If for no other reason than helping decide on what type of business entity the business should use. That is, will the business be a corporation, sole proprietorship, limited liability company, or a partnership. I was looking at the Indiana Secretary of State's site yesterday and its description of the different business types inspired this post. This link will take you to the same page. Ia m reading this and trying to figure out what any layperson would get out of this mess of abstractions. I do not think very much. Sit down with a lawyer, put forward what kind of business you want, and out of this conversation should come a decision on the best form for your start-up company.
For those in the alcoholic beverage industry (including wineries and brewpubs) and consumers, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau put forth some proposals for new regulations. Here is the summary:
The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) proposes to amend its regulations to require a statement of alcohol content, expressed as a percentage of alcohol by volume, on all alcohol beverage productsFor more information click here.
When starting a Limited Liability Company (LLC), you need three things:
1. An operating agreement.
2. Articles of Organization.
3. An EIN number.
You can do this for yourself and hope for the best, or you can consult an attorney. Of course, I suggest consulting an attorney.
Of the three things listed above, I must admit that preparing the Articles and getting an EIN number are things that can be done without a lawyer. The Articles of can be found on the Indiana Secretary of State's site via this link (it is in PDF format). An EIN number can be gotten from the Internal Revenue Service through this link. That said, get an attorney to make sure you got the job done right before filing the documents with the Indiana Secretary of State and the Internal Revenue Service, respectively.
Where I think a potential LLC needs an attorney is in selecting the business entity and in drafting the operating agreement. The Indiana law setting out the statutory requirements for a LLC can be found here. Yes, one can download LLC operating agreements from the Net or buy them at Office Depot (or some other office supply store) but who is going to make sure that these forms do two important things: 1) comply with Indiana law; and 2) meet the needs of the business? About the first one, read through the Indiana LLC statute (see the link above) while reading the form obtained from the Net or the store and make sure it does match Indiana law. I suggest that is not a wise use of a businessperson's time.
As for number two, let me tell a story. Two fellows go into business and then the business sours. The LLC operating agreement came off the Internet, and then the thing was signed without any changes other than adding their names. The operating agreement does not address certain matters. The parties cannot agree on settling these matters and litigation looms. Without reaching a courtroom, the parties have incurred legal bills going into the four figures and rising. The lawyers agree on one thing: a "real" operating agreement would have cost a whole lot less and solved the problem without any litigation. I suspect any claim of no litigation but having seen the operating agreement, it certainly would made a very short case. In the end, call it another penny-wise, pound-foolish example.
I guess you could say that these are good uses of our tax dollars.
The Internal Revenue Service has its Tax Information For Businesses page. This page looks like a portal (that is a links page) for businesses wanting tax information and forms. I think three particular pages ought to have general interest. The others may be important to you because of particular interests and should still be checked out. One link of general interest leads to Small Business Products Online Ordering where you can buy IRS products for your business. One thought here - ask your accountant about these products first. The second is Small Business and Self-Employed One-Stop Resource and I think the name says it all. Lastly, I think here is one also of self-evident interest: Starting a Business.
The Indiana Department of Revenue has a links page for business-related issues here. While most times we think of taxes in terms of income taxes and thus the Internal Revenue Service, but that is not always so. Indiana businesses selling things must keep an eye on their sales taxes which are handled through the Indiana Department of Revenue.
First, think hard on this. Ask yourself if you can stand the strain of no regular pay. Ask yourself how you will handle the great likelihood of failure. If you are married, ask your wife the same questions.
Second, you need a business plan. More importantly, you need to do the math behind a business plan. You can find books and materials online about and on business plans. Use them but remember that none of them are perfect. I would also suggest reading Sun Tzu's Art of War to learn something of strategy but that is a particularly peculiar idea of my own.
Third, go get a lawyer and an accountant. The accountant you need for staying abreast of all the tax laws - Indiana and federal. A few words about why you need a lawyer.
I am going to have some posts on setting up particular business types. You can do some of this yourself but this an area ripe for error. Consulting an attorney should get you, budding entrepreneur, to point you want to be: running your own business. Lawyer's ethical rules make us put the client's interests ahead of our own profit. That cannot be said of any company promising you a low cost incorporation. Remember this: you get what you pay for.
Legal issues do not end with starting the business. Government regulations lead to legal services being needed. These should be known before starting the business but some may not become known till after the start of the business. These intersections between government and business include the following: trademarks, copyrights, patents, zoning, property taxes, withholding tax for employees, sales tax, licensing, employment law issues, environmental/pollution/public health issues, immigration and so on. What the business owner should want is limiting the business' exposure to legal issues in a way that will lower the business' profits.
Does your business rely on any of these things:
1. Your ability to write good, enforceable contracts?
2. Your ability to understand contracts from those you do business with?
3. Knowing and meeting state and federal regulations affecting your business?
If you answered "YES" to any of these questions, then ask yourself how much money you are losing doing all this by yourself? If your time can better be spent doing something else for the business, then why does your business not have a lawyer?
Okay, that explains half of the question, but a business needs a lawyer for objective advice as much as it does for the preparing of documents. That makes the whole answer as to why a business needs a lawyer.
But how is the business to afford a lawyer and the lawyer to afford providing services? My solution involves getting away from hourly billing and move to varying my costs according to the job and client. Hourly billing remains for the unique document preparation and for some defense litigation. It also means that the client understand that a little cost for prevention saves a lot when faced with litigation. I provide consultations on a monthly fee that slides from $400.00 per month for nothing more than the client being able to call me up with any questions to $1,500.00 per month where there is advice and document drafting. In between lies the variances - some will need less consistent document drafting, others will have simple documents but not very often, and others will complicated documents drafted every so often - and the fees should also vary from slightly higher monthly fee to just adding the contracts on a la carte or a reduction in the hourly fee for complicated document drafting.
With the costs known upfront, businesses get fewer surprises and can budget accordingly. Even litigation can be handled on something besides an hourly rate. Where failing to prevent legal problems - and there are a myriad of those pitfalls for any business - can mean the end of the business, the business owner needs an attorney. Lawyers need to educate their business clients how lawyers can help their businesses. Both lawyers and clients need to talk about what services they need and how to provide them.
This may not be the best personal finance blog, but I find it eminently readable. Importantly to me, it is written by someone trying to work out their finances rather than a professional. So do check out 2million - My Journey to Financial Freedom.
One remnant from my defunct bankruptcy practice is my belief that we can all stand educating about personal finance. This place looks like a good start.
Particularly, the Office of Advocacy. This office has e-mail alerts for the small business including alerts about regulations affecting the small business owner. Small business can also access some of the SBA's research on small businesses here. A good example of tax dollars at work. Here is the link to the web page: http://www.sba.gov/advo/
LexisOne reprinted Tips For Starting A Home-Based Business from the Associated Press. I suggest reading the entire article but since I am not sure how long the link will persist, here are the high points:
Here are nine other considerations for those operating or considering a home-based business, according to small-business experts:
1. Start with research. Explore business structures on Web sites such as SBA.gov from the Small Business Administration. Seek feedback on your business plan from seasoned volunteers at SCORE, Counselors to America's Small Business.
2. Do a detailed analysis of costs to figure out how much money you'll need. Forecast three scenarios: a best-case, realistic and worst-case financial picture. Karen Belasco, founder and "chief cookie counselor" of Good Fortunes, a personalized cookie business in Canoga Park, Calif., said she wishes she had spent more time learning about cash flow and the bottom line when she started the company in 1995. "I really lost money for a very long time and we couldn't figure out why," Belasco said. "There were certain hidden costs we just weren't seeing." Still, Good Fortunes has grown to do just under $5 million in annual sales. "My drive and determination was what kept me in business," she said. "I could've used some basic tools at the beginning that probably would've gotten me here a lot faster."
3. Overcome distractions and designate a space in the house for business activity. "Carve out a space where you actually go," said Charles Matthews, executive director of the University of Cincinnati's Center for Entrepreneurship in Ohio. The kitchen table doesn't cut it, he said. "Select a location that's exclusively devoted to your business. It doesn't have to be huge but it has to be effective and efficient, especially if you have clients visit your office."
4. Be your first investor and keep funding sources close to home at first. Start with family, friends and home equity before seeking angel investors or venture capital, Monosoff said. "You have to believe in what you're doing with conviction, and you have to invest in yourself with education and time and money before you can expect other people to support what you're doing."
5. Consider entering contests and business-plan competitions that can help fund and guide your business.
6. If you have trouble securing a bank loan, consider applying to the SBA or microlending organizations. Monosoff recommends sites such as MicroenterpriseWorks.org, and CountMeIn.org, which are run by nonprofit organizations that offer loans up to $25,000, plus coaching, she said. "To have that combination of the funding to give you the seed money and the mentoring is just invaluable."
7. Outsource high-level business functions such as accounting if you don't have the background or time to do a competent job. "A lot of accountants and attorneys will give you a consultation for free," Monosoff said. "Be sure to ask that before you go." Ask for and check references before turning over the bookkeeping, Nemeth added.
8. Ask family for support or consider hiring someone to do the domestic work if you feel overwhelmed. Relinquishing tasks such as child care, housecleaning, cooking and grocery shopping can help you carve out time to focus on the business. If you can't afford to pay for help, look for programs offering free activities for kids in your area. Contact your local Chamber of Commerce.
9. Have an exit strategy. Can you sell the business, pieces of it, or license the product if you no longer want or can afford to continue?
Well, maybe not for just the lawyers. Findlaw has an interesting article on the new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Interesting for the history (not much of which was taught in law school) of the federal rules and interesting for some of the problems with the revised rules.
One problem discussed is supersession:
The Rules Advisory Committee has addressed this contingency in the new version of Rule 86(b), which expressly states that for supersession purposes, the effective date of re-styled Rules shall be the date of the last substantive change to that amendment. However, it is not clear that a federal Rule can change its effective date by fiat. The Supersession Clause of the Rules Enabling Act makes supersession turn on the date that a Rule takes effect, not the date that a Rule says it should be deemed to take effect. And in a conflict between the Rules Enabling Act and the Federal Rules, the Enabling Act prevails, because the supersession clause does not (and logically cannot) apply to itself.
But if the re-styling project will not create supersession problems, it may nonetheless lead to confusion. What happens when circumstances arise in which the meaning of a re-styled Rule appears to conflict with the meaning of the old version of the Rule?A bit far afield from much I write about on this blog but I think the whole article worth going back and reading in full.
Got an interest in The Clean Water Act?
The Environmental Law Institute has its Clean Water Act Jurisdictional Handbook online for a free download.
The Environmental Protection Agency has been fiddling with its libraries recently and now is about to do more, according to this press release from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing procedures that may lock away a large portion of its library collections from access by the public, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Compounding the inaccessibility of physical collections, the public’s ability to electronically search digitized EPA holdings is problematic as well.Over the past 18 months, EPA has closed large parts of its library network, including regional libraries serving 23 states, as well as its Headquarters Library and several technical libraries. The holdings from these shuttered facilities have been shipped to one of three “repositories” – located in Cincinnati, North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park and D.C. How the public, and even EPA’s own staff, access these growing repositories has been uncertain.
As I see it, this will not serve the public or the business community. What am I missing?
Hoosiers do not often discuss the problems of living together or cohabitation agreements. When we do the topic seems to come up most in terms of gay marriage. What most people here overlook is that more than just gays and lesbians live together. True, heterosexuals living together but unmarried do the marriage option open to them.
You need to think about a a cohabitation agreement whenever either of you intend to mix assets and income without any plan of marriage. When you and your partner intermingle money there always exists the possibility for conflict and the cohabitation agreement provides a means for solving that conflict. Yes, you can go to court and let the court sort out the problem. Consider this post on the New Jersey Family Law Blog with this rather self-explanatory title: Unmarried couples who buy property together should consider a written agreement. The New Jersey factual scenario can occur here Blogger: Sam Hasler's Indiana Divorce & Family Law Blog - Manage Postsin Indiana. You can look at how Indiana's courts have treated these kind of cases here on my Indiana Divorce and Family Law Blog: http://haslerlaw2.blogspot.com/2007/02/living-together-in-indiana-and-then.html .
Cohabitation agreements also serve in another kind of crisis: the death of a partner. Admittedly my views on cohabitation agreements did not originally include more of what I consider basic estate planning. I will say that the Indiana appellate court cases colored my views - they are wholly focused on the breakup of the relationship. My view changed and I think most people today think a cohabitation agreement should include Wills, powers of attorney and health care powers of attorney. Read the New Jersey Family Law Blog post I linked to above for a concurring opinion. Indiana probate law no more protects unmarried persons than do our family law statutes. The financial and emotional investments made with your partner may be lost during a serious illness and/or death.
Remember this as the bottom line for anyone living together and sharing a substantial amount of their income and assets: get a lawyer and get a cohabitation agreement.
What to do when you are an at-will employee and the business just closes its doors? First, I suggest making speeches about suing the company is not a good idea. Second, get yourself to the Workforce Development office for signing up to get unemployment benefits.
The Richmond Garfield's restaurant closed their doors this week. The employees had no notice of the restaurant's impending demise and so were certainly shocked to find themselves unemployed. So reports the Richmond Palladium-Item.
As some of the comments make clear, Indiana is an at-will employment state. That severely limits any wrongful discharge kind of suit.
On the other hand, that the employer blithely ignored any harm done to its emp0loyees seems pretty clear cut. Not that that lack of concern rises to grounds for a lawsuit. It does seem highly unlikely that Garfield's will want to re-enter the Richmond market, or that many from the Richmond market will frequent Garfield's restaurant's outside of Richmond, or that those reading the Palladium-Item articles outside of the Richmond area will be impressed with the Garfield's franchise system.
The Australian newspaper The Age published a a report under its Tech section with the headline Fit for business. The headline interested me enough to read the article - which was mostly about a local gym franchise and how it used mapping software to divide its territory.
Mr Swain says the chain has not had any failures in the 72 openings, something he puts down to the Pitney Bowes MapInfo reports the company has relied on for the six years since arriving in Australia. Now he has taken the technology in-house with the release of MapInfo's AnySite, which allows faster real-estate decisions because reports and data can be seen internally.
"We use it to work out where we need to be without cannibalising existing clubs. It's an important part of our feasibility study."
The software uses the Australian Bureau of Statistics as a major source of data and is popular among shopping centre developers and franchise chains. It has been used by the company to provide consultancy reports for clients, but is now available as a CD-ROM package to allow technology-savvy customers to extract their own analysis.
What makes a better contract?
My short answer is the better contract lets everyone know what is expected of them and what they get for doing what is expected of them and what will happen if someone does not do what they are supposed to do.
Serendipity resulted in finding the following posts. I suggest them for those needing contracts written or writing contracts. They give a much fuller answer to what makes a better contract.
David Munn's Legaltech.com Blog has a post, Extreme Contract Simplification, but the following is key to the post (and has more information than available to non-members at the IACCM site) about Scottish & Newcastle's approach to contracts:
The S&N approach is radically different. Their approach is to start with the assumption that they can use a short and simple contract. If they can’t find a good reason not to use this approach, they try to develop a contract that is stripped of as many legal terms as possible—and those that remain are as simple and short as possible.
I wish I had time to read everything that interested me. I fight to keep up with the blogs and e-mails and articles that I need to read. Here are some blogs I ran across in the recent past which I find interesting but a bit outside of my law practice at this time.
Eric Goldman's Technology & Marketing Law Blog. I think every business needs to keep an eye on technology and every business lawyer needs to keep that eye (if not both) on where law and technology intersects. Mr. Goldman's blog is that intersection of law and technology, but for me it is just a bit more directed to technology businesses and the law. Definitely a great read but not of those I am supposed to be reading to keep up with my practice areas.
Law and Technology Theory. Definitely one that does not directly aid my law practice but I am tempted to read. Tempted for no other reason than to test my understanding of what I am reading. It has not been updated in three months and gives links for those interested in the more academic reaches of the law. Here is a taste of the blog:
The first draws upon Haraway’s desire that “[a]ny interesting being in technoscience, such as a textbook, molecule, equation…can – often should – be teased open to show the sticky economic, technical, political, organic, historical, mythic and textual threads that make up its tissues.” (Haraway Modest Witness 1997: 68). While Haraway criticizes him, this seems similar to the type of sociological and historical studies by Bruno Latour, in which complex relations between “agents” - scientists, engineers, corporate leaders, government officers, political, social and cultural events and concerns of the time, and the very machines that scientists and engineers use -interrelate in any technoscientific endeavor. This body of research suggests an approach to law and technology that undertakes detailed examinations of the networks at play behind, not just technological change, but legal responses to technological change.
Not every case goes to trial. Trial Rule 12(B) lists a bunch of reasons for getting rid of a case without a trial Trial Rule 56 allows for getting rid of a case by summary judgment.
Summary judgment means that there is no dispute of material fact and the party filing the motion is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law. Notice the rule requires that the material facts be agreed upon and not all facts. Otherwise, the matter goes to trial.
As I tell my clients, anyone can file anything but whether they will get anything for their troubles is a different story. The procedural rules provide ample opportunity for factually baseless lawsuits to end well before trial. That these rules exist for early termination of factually baseless lawsuits is my chief reason for doubting the need for tort or litigation reform. Three reasons come to my mind for why a lawsuit does not terminate before trial (other than settlement): 1) the defendant's counsel does not use the procedural rules properly, 2) the defendant's counsel does not know to use the procedural rules properly, or 3) there is a dispute of facts needing a trial.
I got to admit that I have an aversion against partnerships. I think most attorneys do not like them. Why? Liability. Law school beats us over the head to avoid liability for our clients as much as possible.
Partnerships ooze with liability issues. From your partner's creditors seizing business assets for his debts to your assets being on the line for business creditors, partnerships just scare lawyers. Maybe a partnership between corporations or limited liability companies or between a corporation and a limited liability company.
With all these problems with partnerships why have one with a spouse? Because partnerships can be implied by actions as well as by a formal agreement. Two spouses start a business and even without a formal agreement, a partnership can be created by their acts. Of course, the husband and wife have probably not even thought of talking to a lawyer about the kind of problems they might be getting themselves into. Why spend good money that could go into the business?
If anything goes wrong with the business, then business creditors can go after all the joint assets. Since most businesses fail, what do you think now of not talking to a lawyer?
What would chatting with an attorney accomplish? I repeat that most attorneys would get the business set up as a corporation or a limited liability company. If the clients were adamantly committed to a partnership, then there would need to be a partnership agreement.
If the clients want to keep the business running as long as possible, they need to consider all of the problems including divorce. I think the equivalent of a prenuptial agreement (or a post-nuptial agreement, if already married) needs to be considered regardless of the business type used by the husband and wife. With a partnership and limited liability company having a written document (and a LLC requiring a written operating agreement) setting out how the business shall be run, incorporating some of the prenuptial/post-nuptial's terms does not seem out of place. Based upon that reasoning, they need a separate prenuptial/post-nuptial agreement if the business is to be set up as a corporation.
Then they need to consider their retirement and estate planning objectives. If the business entity is a partnership or a limited liability company, these objectives need expression in the partnership agreement or the LLC operating agreement and for corporations in a separate document.
The latest Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge newsletter shows a new article entitled Five Steps to Better Family Negotiations. Worth reading by anyone with a family-run business or representing one. The steps are:
For thos who want to keep with IRS tax information for your business, something I got via the U.S. Department of Labor:
The Office of Compliance Assistance Policy would like to bring to your attention compliance assistance news from the Internal Revenue Service:
The IRS has started a news service, e-News for Small Business. Distributed every Wednesday, it brings timely, useful tax information right to your computer.
e-News’ convenient format will put IRS tax information at your fingertips. “Useful Links” brings you quickly to some of the most useful information on IRS.gov for large and small businesses and the self-employed.
To start your FREE subscription to e-News, just go to IRS.gov at http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/content/0,,id=154826,00.html, type in your e-mail address and submit.
The Indiana University Law School at Bloomington has for a long time published its law review articles online. I think they are still the only Indiana law review doing so, but then IU Bloomington was a leader on the Internet.
What I am finding odd is that only the current volume is online. You can access this page through this link. I cannot find the archives and the site is a bit more barren than I otherwise recall.
Today's New York Times published Increasing Rate of Foreclosures Upsets Atlanta. Other than wondering who will not be upset by increasing foreclosures, the article does show that the subprime lending issues continues to be a problem. The I noted The Herald-Bulletin articles on this subject in an earlier post which is here.
To me, this description sounds like Indiana:Rajeev Dhawan, an economics professor at Georgia State University, has started studying the characteristics of loans on homes that are in foreclosure. His preliminary analysis of data from April shows that nearly half were for adjustable rate mortgages and many were issued in the last two years.
“Everybody thought if the home prices kept going up, the lenders will keep refinancing you,” he said.
In recent years, industry groups and law enforcement agencies have also cited Atlanta for being home to some aggressive mortgage fraud schemes. It may have been an easier target because the prices of homes in the same neighborhood can vary greatly here, making it easier to inflate appraisals.
“We are a very affordable place,” said Mike Alexander, the chief of research at the Atlanta Regional Commission, an organization that serves local governments. “But our incomes are very low, and if anything went wrong, it would be very hard for people to maintain their homes.”
Since I have been commenting on trademarks, I want to give a shout out to The Trademark Blog.
Does a restaurant need trademarks? Do most businesses need trademarks?
The New York Times' coverage of the Pearl Oyster Bar litigation got me thinking about how its points would apply here. I made some comments within the original post and others have occurred to me since then.
First, I want to be clear that I am not addressing all restaurants. Franchise restaurants have franchisors eager to protect their trademarks and trade secrets. Nor am I addressing those restaurateurs who do want to expend the money to protect their intellectual property. I specifically exclude them on the assumption that they have made the decision that any infringement has not or will not cost them any money. A civil suit requires damages and that will be measured in dollars. No damages means no lawsuit.
I remain convinced that trademarks are the most cost effective intellectual property for any small business. The name must be unique and used in connection with the business. This could include the business' name or items on the menu or both. Trademarking the business' name provides protection against the competitor with the same or a similar name moving into the same area. While bringing menu items under a trademark provides protection from a competitor using your business' success with a menu item for their own purposes. You can see the government's fees for trademarking here.
You have the ultimate decision as to trademark or not. Remember enforcement costs do exist. I suggest thinking of trademarks as a form of insurance. Like all insurance, you need to think about what will be your costs if you do not have the insurance.
4/26/08 update: Follow Up on "Restaurants and intellectual property" about settlement of this case.
The Anderson Herald-Bulletin has now two articles on local foreclosures and the local real estate market.
The first article has the headline Facing foreclosure in Madison County.
As companies started investing more and more money into businesses that offer subprime home loans, more and more people started getting loans they could not afford to pay back. Now these people are stuck deciding if they should pay for the mortgage or pay for food.The Herald-Bulletin had the good sense to interview Larry Robbins for the article. While one anecdote does not make a trend, it does call for asking more questions about 2005's bankruptcy reform.
In 2006, the Madison County Sheriff’s Civil Department sold 1,082 homes through sheriff sales. This year will be similar to last year....
Larry Robbins, an Anderson bankruptcy lawyer, said he thought that the mortgage foreclosures have led to some bankruptcies, but there are fewer people filing for bankruptcy because of the law that passed in 2005 that made penalties for bankruptcy stronger.The headline for the second article is Subprime time: Falling housing market exposes problems. That article quotes our local Chapter 7 bankruptcy trustee:
Randall Woodruff, bankruptcy trustee for Madison County, serves on a panel of bankruptcy trustees for the southern district of Indiana. He said subprime lending has been a main culprit in the massive foreclosure rate sweeping Anderson and other Central Indiana communities.
“If you are in foreclosure, there aren’t many ways to get out of that problem other than to file for bankruptcy,” said Woodruff, who sees every bankruptcy filed in Madison County. “Whether it’s subprime lending, my gut instinct is that it certainly is one of the problems. The fact that we have so many folks buying homes that they really can’t afford and obtaining mortgages that are going to adjust is clearly one of the main causes of bankruptcies.”
I can only criticize the series for not explaining the difference between a Chapter 7 bankruptcy and a Chapter 13 bankruptcy. An absurdly simplistic explanation is that a Chapter 7 debtor has an insufficient income to fund a plan while a Chapter 13 debtor does have sufficient income.
Reading this post from Adams Drafting I came upon this and it triggered some thoughts which I feel necessary to share:
It’s clear enough that eliminating archaisms such as WITNESSETH wouldn’t affect meaning. But what about eliminating the extraneous shall? Using shall outside of an obligation is sometimes just a distraction, as in This agreement shall be governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario—there’s no risk of the extranous shall affecting meaning. But it might be a different matter if you use shall when attempting to express a condition: as I discussed in this post and this post, it’s relatively commonplace for parties to dispute whether a given provision constitutes an obligation or a condition.Too often I have found clients who think they are not getting their money's worth unless the contract or other document comes freighted with so many legalisms that the contract becomes unintelligible even to those drafting the document. Or I find myself confronted with a document written by a non-lawyer with the sort of language that would have overjoyed a lawyer from the era of wingtip collars and spats but does not give the protection or rights that the parties thought they were getting in the deal.
...As these enemies are entirely invisible and unknown, the methods taken to appease them are equally unaccountable,° and consist in ceremonies, observances, mortifications, sacrifices, presents, or in any practice, however absurd or frivolous, which either folly or knavery recommends to a blind and terrified credulity.° Weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance, are, therefore, the true sources of SUPERSTITION.David Hume, OF SUPERSTITION AND ENTHUSIASM.
Doug Masson over at Masson's Blog has a post titled Collection Law Math. Check it out if you are debtor being sued or an attorney who handles collection cases. Masson explains the point at which one's wages are garnishable and does it quite intelligibly. When I was doing consumer bankruptcy work, I had the hardest time explaining to some potential clients that they were judgment proof. Judgment proof meaning that they had no assets for attachment and insufficient wages for garnishment.
Always remember that time is the enemy in any legal matter - more so than any other factor. You need to act within such and such time and not doing so can end the case. Here is an example from the family law side of things: Paternity of D.T.B., a child born out of wedlock; Andre D. Barr v. Paula J. Frison (NFP). (Yes, it is a not-for-publication case but it does a good job of iillustatrating the problem of procrastination). Waiting six years exceeds any idea of reasonableness.
The Indianapolis Star reports changes in Indiana's Loan Broker Act. These changes include:
>> Requirement for the creation of a principal manager who will oversee the loan brokers at each firm. The principal manager, who must have at least three years of experience in the financial services industry, will be hired privately by each firm.>> Requirement for criminal background checks on loan broker employees, owners and principal managers.>> Requirement for written examinations for employees and principal managers. Currently registered employees must the test upon license renewal.>> Increased flexibility for the Indiana Securities Commissioner to revoke, deny or suspend a loan broker license for reasons including violations of loan broker-related laws in the past 10 years under the Commissioner's jurisdiction. In addition, knowingly filing false statements is now a Class C felony.>> Requirements for certain exempt entities to file notices with the Securities Division every two years.
